A Tarheel CollageFor the second graphics activity I chose to create a collage inspired by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I love all things "Tarheel", especially the way UNC embodies a legacy of excellence in both academics and athletics. Since the prior graphics activity was my first exposure to Adobe Photoshop Elements, I opted to continue using the software in an effort to learn more of the functionality.
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I began the activity by going to Wikimedia Commons and performed searches on UNC Tarheels, UNC campus, and UNC Chapel Hill. I actually ended up downloading eleven different photos showing architecture across campus, scenes from athletic events and events organized by student organizations. I always chose to download images in size 512MB. After downloading, I used Preview on my Mac to look at the quality of the photo. All but one (a cropped image from a UNC vs Duke basketball game) appeared to be of high quality.
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Links are provided below for the four images I used in the Tarheel Collage:
Once I decided on my four images, I opened the Photo Editor part of Photoshop Elements and dragged my four photos into the photo bin. On the right side of the window I went to Create --> Photo Collage. I opted for the 10.5 by 9 inches canvas. The program worked for a little bit and then spit out the following collage:
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Clearly by the blank, gray boxes, Photoshop was expecting me to upload four more images. At this point, I really had no idea how to go about deleting these empty boxes or editing my own photos. While I probably could have used Google or Adobe Help for my questions, I instead tried to learn by trial and error. From the first graphics activity I knew I could get more editing options by toggling my window to "guided" or "expert". Thus the first thing I did was change from "basic mode" to "advanced mode" for the left hand side toolbar. I noticed that when I made this adjustment I had more options in the lower right hand corner, including graphics and layers. Hoping "layers" meant the same thing it does in PowerPoint, I started with that selection. Much to my delight, I saw how each image, including the background, was its own layer. I was in business! I first deleted the four blank layers the program had automatically added to the collage. As seen in the image below, I quickly noticed the background color was a horrible greenish shade. I toggled my right-hand menu to "graphics" and noticed I had a gamut of options for background color and style. In keeping with the UNC theme, I opted for a plain sky blue background color. I only wanted the background to compliment the images, not deter from them.
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After selecting the background color, I went back to the layers option. Since all of my photos were hovering near the top of the collage, I needed to individually move, resize and rotate them. As I highlighted each layer, I used "tool options" to resize and rotate the photos. This part of the process took me a while. I tried various locations, sizes and rotations for each photo until I was happy with the layout. Also, I reordered a couple of layers, in particular moving the female soccer player on top of the well. Lastly, I did not like the way the software cropped the soccer player. While there may be amuch easier way, I deleted this layer and added a new layer with the original photo. I then slightly enlarged the image and placed it on the canvas in the same orientation as the one I deleted. The before and after of this process can be seen by the two images below.
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While technically I had met the requirements of the activity at this point, I was having fun with Photoshop and wanted to learn more functionality. I noticed a math function symbol, fx, on each layer. When selecting this symbol, Photoshop brought up a "Style Settings" window, as seen in the image below. First, I clicked on he Adobe Help link to learn a little about layer styles before just randomly adding miscellaneous effects. With the shadow, glow, bevel and stroke options, I realized I could cause the observers eyes to moved around the collage. I added an outer glow to all four photos, using a deeper yellow than the default. For the seal and lacrosse photo I slightly beveled down, and for the well and soccer player I slightly beveled up. Lastly, I about 25 pixel distance of drop shadow to the top photos and about half of that distance to the bottom photos. This forces the eyes to the center of the collage upon first glance, and then the eyes travel around the images.
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My goal was to create a UNC-inspired collage that could catch the attention of the eyes. The only task that remained was resizing the image. At this point the collage was 2255x1980 pixels and well over the KB limit. In Photoshop, I went to "Save as Web", toggled the format to JPEG High and typed in the width pixel requirements of 500. This automatically brought the height to 439 pixels. While this is not 500x360 as the instructions detail, I did not want to distort the collage. I suspect my width and height are closer because I selected a more square-like canvas in the beginning. Lastly, since I could go up to 100KB in size, I slowly moved the quality up from 60% to 72% in an effort to create an even better image. Overall, I have had a blast learning Photoshop Elements, but I still feel like there is so much I do not know, especially being able to recognize styles and effects simply by the name. While I am no longer a newbie, the software offers so many editing options that I need more experience to refer to myself as anything other than a novice!
and performed searches on UNC Tarheels, UNC campus, and UNC Chapel Hill. I actually ended up downloading eleven different photos showing architecture across campus, scenes from athletic events and events organized by student organizations. I always chose to download images in size 512MB. After downloading, I used Preview on my Mac to look at the quality of the photo. All but one (a cropped image from a UNC vs Duke basketball game) appeared to be of high quality.
Links are provided below for the four images I used in the Tarheel Collage:
The Old Well: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A2008-07-11_UNC-CH_Old_Well_in_the_sun.jpg
UNC Men's Lacrosse Team: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AUNC_Lacrosse.jpg
UNC Seal: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AUNC_Seal.JPG
UNC Women's Soccer Player Lindsay Tarpley: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALindsay_Tarpley_UNC.jpg
Once I decided on my four images, I opened the Photo Editor part of Photoshop Elements and dragged my four photos into the photo bin. On the right side of the window I went to Create --> Photo Collage. I opted for the 10.5 by 9 inches canvas. The program worked for a little bit and then spit out the following collage:
While technically I had met the requirements of the activity at this point, I was having fun with Photoshop and wanted to learn more functionality. I noticed a math function symbol, fx, on each layer. When selecting this symbol, Photoshop brought up a "Style Settings" window, as seen in the image below. First, I clicked on he Adobe Help link to learn a little about layer styles before just randomly adding miscellaneous effects. With the shadow, glow, bevel and stroke options, I realized I could cause the observers eyes to moved around the collage. I added an outer glow to all four photos, using a deeper yellow than the default. For the seal and lacrosse photo I slightly beveled down, and for the well and soccer player I slightly beveled up. Lastly, I about 25 pixel distance of drop shadow to the top photos and about half of that distance to the bottom photos. This forces the eyes to the center of the collage upon first glance, and then the eyes travel around the images.
My goal was to create a UNC-inspired collage that could catch the attention of the eyes. The only task that remained was resizing the image. At this point the collage was 2255x1980 pixels and well over the KB limit. In Photoshop, I went to "Save as Web", toggled the format to JPEG High and typed in the width pixel requirements of 500. This automatically brought the height to 439 pixels. While this is not 500x360 as the instructions detail, I did not want to distort the collage. I suspect my width and height are closer because I selected a more square-like canvas in the beginning. Lastly, since I could go up to 100KB in size, I slowly moved the quality up from 60% to 72% in an effort to create an even better image. Overall, I have had a blast learning Photoshop Elements, but I still feel like there is so much I do not know, especially being able to recognize styles and effects simply by the name. While I am no longer a newbie, the software offers so many editing options that I need more experience to refer to myself as anything other than a novice!